We've searched our database for all the quotes and captions related to Motivational People. Here they are! All 100 of them:
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The Paradoxical CommandmentsPeople are illogical, unreasonable, and self-centered.Love them anyway.If you do good, people will accuse you of selfish ulterior motives.Do good anyway.If you are successful, you will win false friends and true enemies.Succeed anyway.The good you do today will be forgotten tomorrow.Do good anyway.Honesty and frankness make you vulnerable.Be honest and frank anyway.The biggest men and women with the biggest ideas can be shot down by the smallest men and women with the smallest minds.Think big anyway.People favor underdogs but follow only top dogs.Fight for a few underdogs anyway.What you spend years building may be destroyed overnight.Build anyway.People really need help but may attack you if you do help them.Help people anyway.Give the world the best you have and you'll get kicked in the teeth.Give the world the best you have anyway.
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Kent M. Keith (The Silent Revolution: Dynamic Leadership in the Student Council)
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Keep GoingYour hardest times often lead to the greatest moments of your life. Keep going. Tough situations build strong people in the end.
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Roy T. Bennett (The Light in the Heart)
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Letting go means to come to the realization that some people are a part of your history, but not a part of your destiny.
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Steve Maraboli
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Never lose hope. Storms make people stronger and never last forever.
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Roy T. Bennett (The Light in the Heart)
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There are two basic motivating forces: fear and love. When we are afraid, we pull back from life. When we are in love, we open to all that life has to offer with passion, excitement, and acceptance. We need to learn to love ourselves first, in all our glory and our imperfections. If we cannot love ourselves, we cannot fully open to our ability to love others or our potential to create. Evolution and all hopes for a better world rest in the fearlessness and open-hearted vision of people who embrace life.
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John Lennon
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People, I have discovered, are layers and layers of secrets. You believe you know them, that you understand them, but their motives are always hidden from you, buried in their own hearts. You will never know them, but sometimes you decide to trust them.
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Veronica Roth (Insurgent (Divergent, #2))
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Surround Yourself with People Who Believe in Your Dreams:Surround yourself with people who believe in your dreams, encourage your ideas, support your ambitions, and bring out the best in you.
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Roy T. Bennett (The Light in the Heart)
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Always remember people who have helped you along the way, and donβt forget to lift someone up.
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Roy T. Bennett (The Light in the Heart)
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Strong people have a strong sense of self-worth and self-awareness; they donβt need the approval of others.
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Roy T. Bennett (The Light in the Heart)
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Stop giving other people the power to control your happiness, your mind, and your life. If you don't take control of yourself and your own life, someone else is bound to try.
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Roy T. Bennett (The Light in the Heart)
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The strongest people find the courage and caring to help others, even if they are going through their own storm.
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Roy T. Bennett (The Light in the Heart)
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You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with.
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Jim Rohn
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You should date a girl who reads.Date a girl who reads. Date a girl who spends her money on books instead of clothes, who has problems with closet space because she has too many books. Date a girl who has a list of books she wants to read, who has had a library card since she was twelve.Find a girl who reads. Youβll know that she does because she will always have an unread book in her bag. Sheβs the one lovingly looking over the shelves in the bookstore, the one who quietly cries out when she has found the book she wants. You see that weird chick sniffing the pages of an old book in a secondhand book shop? Thatβs the reader. They can never resist smelling the pages, especially when they are yellow and worn.Sheβs the girl reading while waiting in that coffee shop down the street. If you take a peek at her mug, the non-dairy creamer is floating on top because sheβs kind of engrossed already. Lost in a world of the authorβs making. Sit down. She might give you a glare, as most girls who read do not like to be interrupted. Ask her if she likes the book.Buy her another cup of coffee.Let her know what you really think of Murakami. See if she got through the first chapter of Fellowship. Understand that if she says she understood James Joyceβs Ulysses sheβs just saying that to sound intelligent. Ask her if she loves Alice or she would like to be Alice.Itβs easy to date a girl who reads. Give her books for her birthday, for Christmas, for anniversaries. Give her the gift of words, in poetry and in song. Give her Neruda, Pound, Sexton, Cummings. Let her know that you understand that words are love. Understand that she knows the difference between books and reality but by god, sheβs going to try to make her life a little like her favorite book. It will never be your fault if she does.She has to give it a shot somehow.Lie to her. If she understands syntax, she will understand your need to lie. Behind words are other things: motivation, value, nuance, dialogue. It will not be the end of the world.Fail her. Because a girl who reads knows that failure always leads up to the climax. Because girls who read understand that all things must come to end, but that you can always write a sequel. That you can begin again and again and still be the hero. That life is meant to have a villain or two.Why be frightened of everything that you are not? Girls who read understand that people, like characters, develop. Except in the Twilight series.If you find a girl who reads, keep her close. When you find her up at 2 AM clutching a book to her chest and weeping, make her a cup of tea and hold her. You may lose her for a couple of hours but she will always come back to you. Sheβll talk as if the characters in the book are real, because for a while, they always are.You will propose on a hot air balloon. Or during a rock concert. Or very casually next time sheβs sick. Over Skype.You will smile so hard you will wonder why your heart hasnβt burst and bled out all over your chest yet. You will write the story of your lives, have kids with strange names and even stranger tastes. She will introduce your children to the Cat in the Hat and Aslan, maybe in the same day. You will walk the winters of your old age together and she will recite Keats under her breath while you shake the snow off your boots.Date a girl who reads because you deserve it. You deserve a girl who can give you the most colorful life imaginable. If you can only give her monotony, and stale hours and half-baked proposals, then youβre better off alone. If you want the world and the worlds beyond it, date a girl who reads.Or better yet, date a girl who writes.
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Rosemarie Urquico
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How would your life be different ifβ¦You walked away from gossip and verbal defamation? Let today be the dayβ¦You speak only the good you know of other people and encourage others to do the same.
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Steve Maraboli (Life, the Truth, and Being Free)
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When dealing with people, remember you are not dealing with creatures of logic, but with creatures bristling with prejudice and motivated by pride and vanity.
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Dale Carnegie (How to Win Friends and Influence People)
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People are always blaming their circ*mstances for what they are. I don't believe in circ*mstances. The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circ*mstances they want, and if they can't find them, make them.
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George Bernard Shaw (Mrs. Warren's Profession)
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Good people see the good and bring out the best in other people.
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Roy T. Bennett (The Light in the Heart)
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You learn something valuable from all of the significant events and people, but you never touch your true potential until you challenge yourself to go beyond imposed limitations.
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Roy T. Bennett
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Good things happen in your life when you surround yourself with positive people.
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Roy T. Bennett (The Light in the Heart)
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How would your life be different ifβ¦You stopped allowing other people to dilute or poison your day with their words or opinions? Let today be the dayβ¦You stand strong in the truth of your beauty and journey through your day without attachment to the validation of others.
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Steve Maraboli (Life, the Truth, and Being Free)
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The reason many people in our society are miserable, sick, and highly stressed is because of an unhealthy attachment to things they have no control over.
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Steve Maraboli (Unapologetically You: Reflections on Life and the Human Experience)
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It doesn't matter if a million people tell you what you can't do, or if ten million tell you no. If you get one yes from God that's all you need.
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Tyler Perry
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Let today be the day you stop being haunted by the ghost of yesterday. Holding a grudge & harboring anger/resentment is poison to the soul. Get even with people...but not those who have hurt us, forget them, instead get even with those who have helped us.
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Steve Maraboli (Life, the Truth, and Being Free)
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One of the best ways to influence people is to make them feel important.
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Roy T. Bennett
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Almost every sinful action ever committed can be traced back to a selfish motive. It is a trait we hate in other people but justify in ourselves.
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Stephen Kendrick (The Love Dare)
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Every day People straighten up the hair, why not the heart?
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Ernesto Che Guevara
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LAW 4 Always Say Less Than Necessary When you are trying to impress people with words, the more you say, the more common you appear, and the less in control. Even if you are saying something banal, it will seem original if you make it vague, open-ended, and sphinxlike. Powerful people impress and intimidate by saying less. The more you say, the more likely you are to say something foolish.
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Robert Greene (The 48 Laws of Power)
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Death is a strange thing. People live their whole lives as if it does not exist, and yet it's often one of the great motivations for living. Some of us, in time, become so conscious of it that we live harder, more obstinately, with more fury. Some need its constant presence to even be aware of its antithesis. Others become so preoccupied with it that they go into the waiting room long before it has announced its arrival. We fear it, yet most of us fear more than anything that it may take someone other than ourselves. For the greatest fear of death is always that it will pass us by. And leave us there alone.
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Fredrik Backman (A Man Called Ove)
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Whenever I am in a difficult situation where there seems to be no way out, I think about all the times I have been in such situations and say to myself, "I did it before, so I can do it again.
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Idowu Koyenikan (Wealth for All: Living a Life of Success at the Edge of Your Ability)
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People tend to be generous when sharing their nonsense, fear, and ignorance. And while they seem quite eager to feed you their negativity, please remember that sometimes the diet we need to be on is a spiritual and emotional one. Be cautious with what you feed your mind and soul. Fuel yourself with positivity and let that fuel propel you into positive action.
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Steve Maraboli (Unapologetically You: Reflections on Life and the Human Experience)
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It's a funny thing about life, once you begin to take note of the things you are grateful for, you begin to lose sight of the things that you lack.
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Germany Kent
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Beauty is not who you are on the outside, it is the wisdom and time you gave away to save another struggling soul like you.
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Shannon L. Alder
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Success comes from the inside out. In order to change what is on the outside, you must first change what is on the inside.
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Idowu Koyenikan (Wealth for All: Living a Life of Success at the Edge of Your Ability)
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The problem, often not discovered until late in life, is that when you look for things in life like love, meaning, motivation, it implies they are sitting behind a tree or under a rock. The most successful people in life recognize, that in life they create their own love, they manufacture their own meaning, they generate their own motivation. For me, I am driven by two main philosophies, know more today about the world than I knew yesterday. And lessen the suffering of others. You'd be surprised how far that gets you.
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Neil deGrasse Tyson
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People who lack the clarity, courage, or determination to follow their own dreams will often find ways to discourage yours. When you change for the better, the people around you will be inspired to change also....but only after doing their best to make you stop. Live your truth and don't EVER stop.
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Steve Maraboli (Life, the Truth, and Being Free)
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When you work on something that only has the capacity to make you 5 dollars, it does not matter how much harder you work β the most you will make is 5 dollars.
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Idowu Koyenikan (Wealth for All: Living a Life of Success at the Edge of Your Ability)
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Quand tu veux construire un bateau, ne commence pas par rassembler du bois, couper des planches et distribuer du travail, mais reveille au sein des hommes le desir de la mer grande et large.If you want to build a ship, don't drum up people together to collect wood and don't assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.
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Antoine de Saint-ExupΓ©ry
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Time is an equal opportunity employer. Each human being has exactly the same number of hours and minutes every day. Rich people can't buy more hours. Scientists can't invent new minutes. And you can't save time to spend it on another day. Even so, time is amazingly fair and forgiving. No matter how much time you've wasted in the past, you still have an entire tomorrow.
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Denis Waitley
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We must rapidly begin the shift from a "thing-oriented" society to a "person-oriented" society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.
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Martin Luther King Jr.
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It's not that some people have willpower and some don't... It's that some people are ready to change and others are not.
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James Gordon
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Today we live in a society in which spurious realities are manufactured by the media, by governments, by big corporations, by religious groups, political groups... So I ask, in my writing, What is real? Because unceasingly we are bombarded with pseudo-realities manufactured by very sophisticated people using very sophisticated electronic mechanisms. I do not distrust their motives; I distrust their power. They have a lot of it. And it is an astonishing power: that of creating whole universes, universes of the mind. I ought to know. I do the same thing.
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Philip K. Dick
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Surround Yourself with Positive People Who Believe in Your DreamsDistance yourself from negative people who try to lower your motivation and decrease your ambition. Create space for positive people to come into your life. Surround yourself with positive people who believe in your dreams, encourage your ideas, support your ambitions, and bring out the best in you.
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Roy T. Bennett (The Light in the Heart)
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Plants are more courageous than almost all human beings: an orange tree would rather die than produce lemons, whereas instead of dying the average person would rather be someone they are not.
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Mokokoma Mokhonoana
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Do not let another day go by where your dedication to other people's opinions is greater than your dedication to your own emotions!
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Steve Maraboli (Life, the Truth, and Being Free)
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Temperamentally anxious people can have a hard time staying motivated, period, because their intense focus on their worries distracts them from their goals.
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Winifred Gallagher (Rapt: Attention and the Focused Life)
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People who lack the clarity, courage, or determination to follow their own dreams will often find ways to discourage yours. Live your truth and don't EVER stop!
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Steve Maraboli (Life, the Truth, and Being Free)
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Great goals make great people. People cannot hit what they do not aim for.
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Roy T. Bennett (The Light in the Heart)
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You attract who you are being. When you work at being the type of person that you want to attract, you attract those kinds of people into your life.
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Roy T. Bennett (The Light in the Heart)
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One of the best ways to influence people is to make them feel important. Most people enjoy those rare moments when others make them feel important. It is one of the deepest human desires.
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Roy T. Bennett (The Light in the Heart)
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Don't chase people. Be yourself, do your own thing and work hard. The right people - the ones who really belong in your life - will come to your. And stay.
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Will Smith
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I want to live the rest of my life, however long or short, with as much sweetness as I can decently manage, loving all the people I love, and doing as much as I can of the work I still have to do. I am going to write fire until it comes out of my ears, my eyes, my noseholes--everywhere. Until it's every breath I breathe. I'm going to go out like a f*cking meteor!
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Audre Lorde
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Difficulties and adversities viciously force all their might on us and cause us to fall apart, but they are necessary elements of individual growth and reveal our true potential. We have got to endure and overcome them, and move forward. Never lose hope. Storms make people stronger and never last forever.
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Roy T. Bennett (The Light in the Heart)
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The most intriguing people you will encounter in this life are the people who had insights about you, that you didn't know about yourself.
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Shannon L. Alder
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Why do I read?I just can't help myself.I read to learn and to grow, to laugh and to be motivated.I read to understand things I've never been exposed to.I read when I'm crabby, when I've just said monumentally dumb things to the people I love.I read for strength to help me when I feel broken, discouraged, and afraid.I read when I'm angry at the whole world.I read when everything is going right.I read to find hope.I read because I'm made up not just of skin and bones, of sights, feelings, and a deep need for chocolate, but I'm also made up of words.Words describe my thoughts and what's hidden in my heart.Words are alive--when I've found a story that I love, I read it again and again, like playing a favorite song over and over.Reading isn't passive--I enter the story with the characters, breathe their air, feel their frustrations, scream at them to stop when they're about to do something stupid, cry with them, laugh with them.Reading for me, is spending time with a friend.A book is a friend.You can never have too many.
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Gary Paulsen (Shelf Life: Stories by the Book)
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Get Off The Scale!You are beautiful. Your beauty, just like your capacity for life, happiness, and success, is immeasurable. Day after day, countless people across the globe get on a scale in search of validation of beauty and social acceptance.Get off the scale! I have yet to see a scale that can tell you how enchanting your eyes are. I have yet to see a scale that can show you how wonderful your hair looks when the sun shines its glorious rays on it. I have yet to see a scale that can thank you for your compassion, sense of humor, and contagious smile. Get off the scale because I have yet to see one that can admire you for your perseverance when challenged in life.Itβs true, the scale can only give you a numerical reflection of your relationship with gravity. Thatβs it. It cannot measure beauty, talent, purpose, life force, possibility, strength, or love. Donβt give the scale more power than it has earned. Take note of the number, then get off the scale and live your life. You are beautiful!
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Steve Maraboli (Life, the Truth, and Being Free)
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People are successful because they think and act like successful people.
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Roy T. Bennett (The Light in the Heart)
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There is great change to be experienced once you learn the power of letting go. Stop allowing anyone or anything to control, limit, repress, or discourage you from being your true self! Today is YOURS to shape - own it - break free from people and things that poison or dilute your spirit.
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Steve Maraboli (Unapologetically You: Reflections on Life and the Human Experience)
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If you walked away from atoxic, negative, abusive,one-sided, dead-endlow vibrationalrelationship or friendship β you won.
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Lalah Delia
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What motivates me is seeing people in the crowd and wondering what they're going home to and what they're dealing with, and knowing that for the time being we're their escape.
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Hayley Williams
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Most people can motivate themselves to do things simply by knowing that those things need to be done. But not me. For me, motivation is this horrible, scary game where I try to make myself do something while I actively avoid doing it. If I win, I have to do something I don't want to do. And if I lose, I'm one step closer to ruining my entire life. And I never know whether I'm going to win or lose until the last second.
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Allie Brosh (Hyperbole and a Half: Unfortunate Situations, Flawed Coping Mechanisms, Mayhem, and Other Things That Happened)
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I am a drifter, and as lonely as that can be, it is also remarkably freeing. I will never define myself in terms of anyone else. I will never feel the pressure of peers or the burden of parental expectation. I can view everyone as pieces of a whole, and focus on the whole, not the pieces. I have learned to observe, far better than most people observe. I am not blinded by the past or motivated by the future. I focus on the present because that is where I am destined to live.
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David Levithan (Every Day (Every Day, #1))
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Do what you think is right. Don't let people make the decision of right or wrong for you.
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Steve Maraboli (Life, the Truth, and Being Free)
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When God takes out the trash, don't go digging back through it. Trust Him.
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Amaka Imani Nkosazana (Heart Crush)
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People will always have opinions about your decision because they're not courageous enough to take action on their opinion.
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Steve Maraboli
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Great companies don't hire skilled people and motivate them, they hire already motivated people and inspire them.
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Simon Sinek (Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action)
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People who are unable to motivate themselves must be content with mediocrity, no matter how impressive their other talents.
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Andrew Carnegie
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I advise you to stop sharing your dreams with people who try to hold you back, even if they're your parents. Because, if you're the kind of person who senses there's something out there for you beyond whatever it is you're expected to do - if you want to be EXTRA-ordinary- you will not get there by hanging around a bunch of people who tell you you're not extraordinary. Instead, you will probablybecome as ordinary as they expect you to be.
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Kelly Cutrone (If You Have to Cry, Go Outside: And Other Things Your Mother Never Told You)
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Insecure people often falsify the past, in order to make the future pure.
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Shannon L. Alder
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The single greatest lesson the garden teaches is that our relationship to the planet need not be zero-sum, and that as long as the sun still shines and people still can plan and plant, think and do, we can, if we bother to try, find ways to provide for ourselves without diminishing the world.
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Michael Pollan (The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals)
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LAW 38Think As You Like But Behave Like OthersIf you make a show of going against the times, flaunting your unconventional ideas and unorthodox ways, people will think that you only want attention and that you look down upon them. They will find a way to punish you for making them feel inferior. It is far safer to blend in and nurture the common touch. Share your originality only with tolerant friends and those who are sure to appreciate your uniqueness.
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Robert Greene (The 48 Laws of Power)
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Holding a grudge & harboring anger/resentment is poison to the soul. Get even with people...but not those who have hurt us, forget them, instead get even with those who have helped us.
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Steve Maraboli (Unapologetically You: Reflections on Life and the Human Experience)
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You have a unique gift to offer this world. Be true to yourself, be kind to yourself, read and learn about everything that interests you and keep away from people who bring you down. When you treat yourself kindly and respect the uniqueness of those around you, you will be giving this world an amazing gift... YOU!
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Steve Maraboli (Unapologetically You: Reflections on Life and the Human Experience)
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It is one thing to make a mistake, and quite another thing not to admit it. People will forgive mistakes, because mistakes are usually of the mind, mistakes of judgment. But people will not easily forgive the mistakes of the heart, the ill intention, the bad motives, the prideful justifying cover-up of the first mistake.
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Stephen R. Covey (The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People)
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These illustrations suggest four general maxims[...]. The first is: remember that your motives are not always as altruistic as they seem to yourself. The second is: don't over-estimate your own merits. The third is: don't expect others to take as much interest in you as you do yourself. And the fourth is: don't imagine that most people give enough thought to you to have any special desire to persecute you.
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Bertrand Russell (The Conquest of Happiness)
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So many people will tell you βnoβ, and you need to find something you believe in so hard that you just smile and tell them βwatch meβ. Learn to take rejection as motivation to prove people wrong. Be unstoppable. Refuse to give up, no matter what. Itβs the best skill you can ever learn.
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Charlotte Eriksson
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Not all dreamers are winners, but all winners are dreamers. Your dream is the key to your future. The Bible says that, "without a vision (dream), a people perish." You need a dream, if you're going to succeed in anything you do.
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Mark Gorman
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Today is a new day and it brings with it a new set of opportunities for me to act on.I am attentive to the opportunities and I seize them as they arise.I have full confidence in myself and my abilities.I can do all things that I commit myself to.No obstacle is too big or too difficult for me to handle because what lies inside me is greater than what lies ahead of me.I am committed to improving myself and I am getting better daily.I am not held back by regret or mistakes from the past.I am moving forward daily.Absolutely nothing is impossible for me.
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Idowu Koyenikan (Wealth for All: Living a Life of Success at the Edge of Your Ability)
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No matter how old you are now. You are never too young or too old for success or going after what you want. Hereβs a short list of people who accomplished great things at different ages1) Helen Keller, at the age of 19 months, became deaf and blind. But that didnβt stop her. She was the first deaf and blind person to earn a Bachelor of Arts degree.2) Mozart was already competent on keyboard and violin; he composed from the age of 5.3) Shirley Temple was 6 when she became a movie star on βBright Eyes.β4) Anne Frank was 12 when she wrote the diary of Anne Frank.5) Magnus Carlsen became a chess Grandmaster at the age of 13.6) Nadia ComΔneci was a gymnast from Romania that scored seven perfect 10.0 and won three gold medals at the Olympics at age 14.7) Tenzin Gyatso was formally recognized as the 14th Dalai Lama in November 1950, at the age of 15.8) Pele, a soccer superstar, was 17 years old when he won the world cup in 1958 with Brazil.9) Elvis was a superstar by age 19.10) John Lennon was 20 years and Paul Mcartney was 18 when the Beatles had their first concert in 1961.11) Jesse Owens was 22 when he won 4 gold medals in Berlin 1936.12) Beethoven was a piano virtuoso by age 2313) Issac Newton wrote PhilosophiΓ¦ Naturalis Principia Mathematica at age 2414) Roger Bannister was 25 when he broke the 4 minute mile record15) Albert Einstein was 26 when he wrote the theory of relativity16) Lance E. Armstrong was 27 when he won the tour de France 17) Michelangelo created two of the greatest sculptures βDavidβ and βPietaβ by age 2818) Alexander the Great, by age 29, had created one of the largest empires of the ancient world19) J.K. Rowling was 30 years old when she finished the first manuscript of Harry Potter20) Amelia Earhart was 31 years old when she became the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean21) Oprah was 32 when she started her talk show, which has become the highest-rated program of its kind22) Edmund Hillary was 33 when he became the first man to reach Mount Everest23) Martin Luther King Jr. was 34 when he wrote the speech βI Have a Dream."24) Marie Curie was 35 years old when she got nominated for a Nobel Prize in Physics 25) The Wright brothers, Orville (32) and Wilbur (36) invented and built the world's first successful airplane and making the first controlled, powered and sustained heavier-than-air human flight26) Vincent Van Gogh was 37 when he died virtually unknown, yet his paintings today are worth millions.27) Neil Armstrong was 38 when he became the first man to set foot on the moon.28) Mark Twain was 40 when he wrote "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer", and 49 years old when he wrote "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn"29) Christopher Columbus was 41 when he discovered the Americas30) Rosa Parks was 42 when she refused to obey the bus driverβs order to give up her seat to make room for a white passenger31) John F. Kennedy was 43 years old when he became President of the United States32) Henry Ford Was 45 when the Ford T came out.33) Suzanne Collins was 46 when she wrote "The Hunger Games"34) Charles Darwin was 50 years old when his book On the Origin of Species came out.35) Leonardo Da Vinci was 51 years old when he painted the Mona Lisa.36) Abraham Lincoln was 52 when he became president.37) Ray Kroc Was 53 when he bought the McDonalds Franchise and took it to unprecedented levels.38) Dr. Seuss was 54 when he wrote "The Cat in the Hat".40) Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger III was 57 years old when he successfully ditched US Airways Flight 1549 in the Hudson River in 2009. All of the 155 passengers aboard the aircraft survived41) Colonel Harland Sanders was 61 when he started the KFC Franchise42) J.R.R Tolkien was 62 when the Lord of the Ring books came out43) Ronald Reagan was 69 when he became President of the US44) Jack Lalane at age 70 handcuffed, shackled, towed 70 rowboats45) Nelson Mandela was 76 when he became President
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Pablo
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I was anti-everything and everyone. I didn't want people around me. This aversion was not some big crippling anxiety; merely a mature recognition of my own psychological vulnerability and my lack of suitability as a companion. Thoughts jostled for space in my crowded brain as i struggled to give them some order which might serve to motivate my listless life.
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Irvine Welsh (The Acid House)
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Many people are unhappy and are not experiencing life to its fullest because theyβve closed their hearts to compassion, they are motivated by only what they want and what they think they need. They rarely do anything for anybody else unless they have an ulterior goal in mind. They are self-involved and self-centered.
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Joel Osteen (Your Best Life Now: 7 Steps to Living at Your Full Potential)
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We read deeply for varied reasons, most of them familiar: that we cannot know enough people profoundly enough; that we need to know ourselves better; that we require knowledge, not just of self and others, but of the way things are. Yet the strongest, most authentic motive for deep readingβ¦is the search for a difficult pleasure.
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Harold Bloom
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I am a strong and powerful woman.I am proud to be a woman and I celebrate the qualities that I have as a woman.I am not defined by other peopleβs opinion of who I should be or what I should do as a woman. I determine that, not anyone else.I am not passed up for a position, title, or promotion because I am a woman.I fully deserve all the good things that comes my way.Irrespective of what anyone might think, being a woman places no boundaries or limits on my abilities.I can do anything I set my mind to.I celebrate my womanhood and I am beautiful both inside and out.
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Idowu Koyenikan (Wealth for All: Living a Life of Success at the Edge of Your Ability)
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Act as if! Act as if you're a wealthy man, rich already, and then you'll surely become rich. Act as if you have unmatched confidence and then people will surely have confidence in you. Act as if you have unmatched experience and then people will follow your advice. And act as if you are already a tremendous success, and as sure as I stand here today - you will become successful.
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Jordan Belfort (The Wolf of Wall Street (The Wolf of Wall Street, #1))
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Political tags β such as royalist, communist, democrat, populist, fascist, liberal, conservative, and so forth β are never basic criteria. The human race divides politically into those who want people to be controlled and those who have no such desire. The former are idealists acting from highest motives for the greatest good of the greatest number. The latter are surly curmudgeons, suspicious and lacking in altruism. But they are more comfortable neighbors than the other sort.
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Robert A. Heinlein
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There is a twilight zone in our hearts that we ourselves cannot see. Even when we know quite a lot about ourselves-our gifts and weaknesses, our ambitions and aspirations, our motives and our drives-large parts of ourselves remain in the shadow of consciousness. This is a very good thing. We will always remain partially hidden to ourselves. Other people, especially those who love us, can often see our twilight zones better than we ourselves can. The way we are seen and understood by others is different from the way we see and understand ourselves. We will never fully know the significance of our presence in the lives of our friends. That's a grace, a grace that calls us not only to humility, but to a deep trust in those who love us. It is the twilight zones of our hearts where true friendships are born.
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Henri J.M. Nouwen
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Recognizing that people's reactions don't belong to you is the only sane way to create. If people enjoy what you've created, terrific. If people ignore what you've created, too bad. If people misunderstand what you've created, don't sweat it. And what if people absolutely hate what you've created? What if people attack you with savage vitriol, and insult your intelligence, and malign your motives, and drag your good name through the mud? Just smile sweetly and suggest - as politely as you possibly can - that they go make their own f*cking art. Then stubbornly continue making yours.
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Elizabeth Gilbert (Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear)
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People are stupid; given proper motivation, almost anyone will believe almost anything. Because people are stupid, they will believe a lie because they want to believe it's true, or because they are afraid it might be true. Peopleβs heads are full of knowledge, facts, and beliefs, and most of it is false, yet they think it all true. People are stupid; they can only rarely tell the difference between a lie and the truth, and yet they are confident they can, and so are all the easier to fool.
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Terry Goodkind (Wizard's First Rule (Sword of Truth, #1))
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Most of what passes for legitimate entertainment is inferior or foolish and only caters to or exploits people's weaknesses. Avoid being one of the mob who indulges in such pastimes. Your life is too short and you have important things to do. Be discriminating about what images and ideas you permit into your mind. If you yourself don't choose what thoughts and images you expose yourself to, someone else will, and their motives may not be the highest. It is the easiest thing in the world to slide imperceptibly into vulgarity. But there's no need for that to happen if you determine not to waste your time and attention on mindless pap.
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Epictetus (The Art of Living: The Classical Manual on Virtue, Happiness and Effectiveness)
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War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things: the decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth a war, is much worse. When a people are used as mere human instruments for firing cannon or thrusting bayonets, in the service and for the selfish purposes of a master, such war degrades a people. A war to protect other human beings against tyrannical injustice; a war to give victory to their own ideas of right and good, and which is their own war, carried on for an honest purpose by their free choice, β is often the means of their regeneration. A man who has nothing which he is willing to fight for, nothing which he cares more about than he does about his personal safety, is a miserable creature who has no chance of being free, unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself. As long as justice and injustice have not terminated their ever-renewing fight for ascendancy in the affairs of mankind, human beings must be willing, when need is, to do battle for the one against the other.
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John Stuart Mill (Principles of Political Economy (Great Minds Series))
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People are often unreasonable, irrational, and self-centered. Forgive them anyway. If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives. Be kind anyway. If you are successful, you will win some unfaithful friends and some genuine enemies. Succeed anyway. If you are honest and sincere people may deceive you. Be honest and sincere anyway. What you spend years creating, others could destroy overnight. Create anyway. If you find serenity and happiness, some may be jealous. Be happy anyway. The good you do today, will often be forgotten. Do good anyway. Give the best you have, and it will never be enough. Give your best anyway. In the final analysis, it is between you and God. It was never between you and them anyway.
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Kent M. Keith
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I know this goes without saying, but Stonehenge really was the most incredible accomplishment. It took five hundred men just to pull each sarsen, plus a hundred more to dash around positioning the rollers. Just think about it for a minute. Can you imagine trying to talk six hundred people into helping you drag a fifty-ton stone eighteen miles across the countryside and muscle it into an upright position, and then saying, 'Right, lads! Another twenty like that, plus some lintels and maybe a couple of dozen nice bluestones from Wales, and we can party!' Whoever was the person behind Stonehenge was one dickens of a motivator, I'll tell you that.
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Bill Bryson (Notes from a Small Island)
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You're not required to save the world with your creativity. Your art not only doesn't have to be original, in other words, it also doesn't have to be important. For example, whenever anyone tells me that they want to write a book in order to help other people I always think 'Oh, please don't. Please don't try to help me.' I mean it's very kind of you to help people, but please don't make it your sole creative motive because we will feel the weight of your heavy intention, and it will put a strain upon our souls.
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Elizabeth Gilbert (Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear)
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I woke up early and took the first train to take me away from the city. The noise and all its people. I was alone on the train and had no idea where I was going, and thatβs why I went there. Two hours later we arrived in a small town, one of those towns with one single coffee shop and where everyone knows each otherβs name. I walked for a while until I found the water, the most peaceful place I know. There I sat and stayed the whole day, with nothing and everything on my mind, cleaning my head. Silence, I learned, is some times the most beautiful sound.
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Charlotte Eriksson
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I couldnβt trust my own emotions. Which emotional reactions were justified, if any? And which ones were tainted by the mental illness of BPD? I found myself fiercely guarding and limiting my emotional reactions, chastising myself for possible distortions and motivations. People who had known me years ago would barely recognize me now. I had become quiet and withdrawn in social settings, no longer the life of the party. After all, how could I know if my boisterous humor were spontaneous or just a borderline desire to be the center of attention? I could no longer trust any of my heart felt beliefs and opinions on politics, religion, or life. The debate queen had withered. I found myself looking at every single side of an issue unable to come to any conclusions for fear they might be tainted. My lifelong ability to be assertive had turned into a constant state of passivity.
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Rachel Reiland (Get Me Out of Here: My Recovery from Borderline Personality Disorder)
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Suicide is a form of murderβ premeditated murder. It isnβt something you do the first time you think of doing it. It takes some getting used to. And you need the means, the opportunity, the motive. A successful suicide demands good organization and a cool head, both of which are usually incompatible with the suicidal state of mind.Itβs important to cultivate detachment. One way to do this is to practice imagining yourself dead, or in the process of dying. If thereβs a window, you must imagine your body falling out the window. If thereβs a knife, you must imagine the knife piercing your skin. If thereβs a train coming, you must imagine your torso flattened under its wheels. These exercises are necessary to achieving the proper distance.The debate was wearing me out. Once you've posed that question, it won't go away. I think many people kill themselves simply to stop the debate about whether they will or they won't. Anything I thought or did was immediately drawn into the debate. Made a stupid remarkβwhy not kill myself? Missed the busβbetter put an end to it all. Even the good got in there. I liked that movieβmaybe I shouldnβt kill myself.In reality, it was only part of myself I wanted to kill: the part that wanted to kill herself, that dragged me into the suicide debate and made every window, kitchen implement, and subway station a rehearsal for tragedy.
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Susanna Kaysen
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Never judge someone's character based on the words of another. Instead, study the motives behind the words of the person casting the bad judgment. An honest woman can sell tangerines all day and remain a good person until she dies, but there will always be naysayers who will try to convince you otherwise. Perhaps this woman did not give them something for free, or at a discount. Perhaps too, that she refused to stand with them when they were wrong β or just stood up for something she felt was right. And also, it could be that some bitter women are envious of her, or that she rejected the advances of some very proud men. Always trust your heart. If the Creator stood before a million men with the light of a million lamps, only a few would truly see him because truth is already alive in their hearts. Truth can only be seen by those with truth in them. He who does not have Truth in his heart, will always be blind to her.
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Suzy Kassem (Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem)
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Though I obviously have no proof of this, the one aspect of life that seems clear to me is that good people do whatever they believe is the right thing to do. Being virtuous is hard, not easy. The idea of doing good things simply because you're good seems like a zero-sum game; I'm not even sure those actions would still qualify as 'good,' since they'd merely be a function of normal behavior. Regardless of what kind of god you believe in--a loving god, a vengeful god, a capricious god, a snooty beret-wearing French god, or whatever--one has to assume that you can't be penalized for doing the things you believe to be truly righteous and just. Certainly, this creates some pretty glaring problems: Hitler may have thought he was serving God. Stalin may have thought he was serving God (or something vaguely similar). I'm certain Osama bin Laden was positive he was serving God. It's not hard to fathom that all of those maniacs were certain that what they were doing was right. Meanwhile, I constantly do things that I know are wrong; they're not on the same scale as incinerating Jews or blowing up skyscrapers, but my motivations might be worse. I have looked directly into the eyes of a woman I loved and told her lies for no reason, except that those lies would allow me to continue having sex with another woman I cared about less. This act did not kill 20 million Russian peasants, but it might be more 'diabolical' in a literal sense. If I died and found out I was going to hell and Stalin was in heaven, I would note the irony, but I couldn't complain. I don't make the f*cking rules.
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Chuck Klosterman (Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs: A Low Culture Manifesto)
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There are only two ways to influence human behavior: you can manipulate it or you can inspire it.Very few people or companies can clearly articulate WHY they do WHAT they do. By WHY I mean your purpose, cause or belief - WHY does your company exist? WHY do you get out of bed every morning? And WHY should anyone care?People donβt buy WHAT you do, they buy WHY you do it.We are drawn to leaders and organizations that are good at communicating what they believe. Their ability to make us feel like we belong, to make us feel special, safe and not alone is part of what gives them the ability to inspire us.For values or guiding principles to be truly effective they have to be verbs. Itβs not βintegrity,β itβs βalways do the right thing.β Itβs not βinnovation,β itβs βlook at the problem from a different angle.β Articulating our values as verbs gives us a clear idea - we have a clear idea of how to act in any situation.Happy employees ensure happy customers. And happy customers ensure happy shareholdersβin that order.Leading is not the same as being the leader. Being the leader means you hold the highest rank, either by earning it, good fortune or navigating internal politics. Leading, however, means that others willingly follow youβnot because they have to, not because they are paid to, but because they want to.You donβt hire for skills, you hire for attitude. You can always teach skills.Great companies donβt hire skilled people and motivate them, they hire already motivated people and inspire them. People are either motivated or they are not. Unless you give motivated people something to believe in, something bigger than their job to work toward, they will motivate themselves to find a new job and youβll be stuck with whoeverβs left.Trust is maintained when values and beliefs are actively managed. If companies do not actively work to keep clarity, discipline and consistency in balance, then trust starts to break down.All organizations start with WHY, but only the great ones keep their WHY clear year after year.
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Simon Sinek (Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action)
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The wish of death had been palpably hanging over this otherwise idyllic paradise for a good many years. All business and politics is personal in the Philippines. If it wasn't for the cheap beer and lovely girls one of us would spend an hour in this dump. They [Jehovah's Witnesses] get some kind of frequent flyer points for each person who signs on.I'm not lazy. I'm just motivationally challenged. I'm not fat. I just have lots of stored energy. You don't get it do you? What people think of you matters more than the reality. Marilyn. Despite standing firm at the final hurdle Marilyn was always ready to run the race. After answering the question the woman bent down behind the stand out of sight of all, and crossed herself. It is amazing what you can learn in prison. Merely through casual conversation Rick had acquired the fundamentals of embezzlement, fraud and armed hold up. He wondered at the price of honesty in a grey world whose half tones changed faster than the weather. The banality of truth somehow always surprises the news media before they tart it up. You've ridden jeepneys in peak hour. Where else can you feel up a fourteen-year-old schoolgirl without even trying? [Ralph Winton on the Philippines finer points] Life has no bottom. No matter how bad things are or how far one has sunk things can always get worse. You could call the Oval Office an information rain shadow. In the Philippines, a whole layer of criminals exists who consider that it is their right to rob you unhindered. If you thwart their wicked desires, to their way of thinking you have stolen from them and are evil. There's honest and dishonest corruption in this country. Don't enjoy it too much for it's what we love that usually kills us. The good guys don't always win wars but the winners always make sure that they go down in history as the good guys. The Philippines is like a woman. You love her and hate her at the same time. I never believed in all my born days that ideas of truth and justice were only pretty words to brighten a much darker and more ubiquitous reality. The girl was experiencing the first flushes of love while Rick was at least feeling the methadone equivalent. Although selfishness and greed are more ephemeral than the real values of life their effects on the world often outlive their origins. Miriam's a meteor job. Somewhere out there in space there must be a meteor with her name on it. Tsismis or rumours grow in this land like tropical weeds. Surprises are so common here that nothing is surprising. A crooked leader who can lead is better than a crooked one who can't. Although I always followed the politics of Hitler I emulate the drinking habits of Churchill. It [Australia] is the country that does the least with the most. Rereading the brief lines that told the story in the manner of Fox News reporting the death of a leftist Rick's dark imagination took hold. Didn't your mother ever tell you never to trust a man who doesn't drink? She must have been around twenty years old, was tall for a Filipina and possessed long black hair framing her smooth olive face. This specter of loveliness walked with the assurance of the knowingly beautiful. Her crisp and starched white uniform dazzled in the late-afternoon light and highlighted the natural tan of her skin. Everything about her was in perfect order. In short, she was dressed up like a pox doctorβs clerk. Suddenly, she stopped, turned her head to one side and spat comprehensively into the street. The tiny putrescent puddle contrasted strongly with the studied aplomb of its all-too-recent owner, suggesting all manner of disease and decay.
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John Richard Spencer
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In life, the question is not if you will have problems, but how you are going to deal with your problems. If the possibility of failure were erased, what would you attempt to achieve?The essence of man is imperfection. Know that you're going to make mistakes. The fellow who never makes a mistake takes his orders from one who does. Wake up and realize this: Failure is simply a price we pay to achieve success.Achievers are given multiple reasons to believe they are failures. But in spite of that, they persevere. The average for entrepreneurs is 3.8 failures before they finally make it in business.When achievers fail, they see it as a momentary event, not a lifelong epidemic.Procrastination is too high a price to pay for fear of failure. To conquer fear, you have to feel the fear and take action anyway. Forget motivation. Just do it. Act your way into feeling, not wait for positive emotions to carry you forward.Recognize that you will spend much of your life making mistakes. If you can take action and keep making mistakes, you gain experience.Life is playing a poor hand well. The greatest battle you wage against failure occurs on the inside, not the outside.Why worry about things you can't control when you can keep yourself busy controlling the things that depend on you?Handicaps can only disable us if we let them. If you are continually experiencing trouble or facing obstacles, then you should check to make sure that you are not the problem.Be more concerned with what you can give rather than what you can get because giving truly is the highest level of living.Embrace adversity and make failure a regular part of your life. If you're not failing, you're probably not really moving forward.Everything in life brings risk. It's true that you risk failure if you try something bold because you might miss it. But you also risk failure if you stand still and don't try anything new.The less you venture out, the greater your risk of failure. Ironically the more you risk failure β and actually fail β the greater your chances of success.If you are succeeding in everything you do, then you're probably not pushing yourself hard enough. And that means you're not taking enough risks. You risk because you have something of value you want to achieve.The more you do, the more you fail. The more you fail, the more you learn. The more you learn, the better you get.Determining what went wrong in a situation has value. But taking that analysis another step and figuring out how to use it to your benefit is the real difference maker when it comes to failing forward. Don't let your learning lead to knowledge; let your learning lead to action.The last time you failed, did you stop trying because you failed, or did you fail because you stopped trying?Commitment makes you capable of failing forward until you reach your goals. Cutting corners is really a sign of impatience and poor self-discipline.Successful people have learned to do what does not come naturally. Nothing worth achieving comes easily. The only way to fail forward and achieve your dreams is to cultivate tenacity and persistence.Never say die. Never be satisfied. Be stubborn. Be persistent. Integrity is a must. Anything worth having is worth striving for with all your might.If we look long enough for what we want in life we are almost sure to find it. Success is in the journey, the continual process. And no matter how hard you work, you will not create the perfect plan or execute it without error. You will never get to the point that you no longer make mistakes, that you no longer fail.The next time you find yourself envying what successful people have achieved, recognize that they have probably gone through many negative experiences that you cannot see on the surface.Fail early, fail often, but always fail forward.
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John C. Maxwell (Failing Forward)
